State lawmakers amended Michigan’s bottle-deposit law in 2008. They wanted to prevent people from bringing bottles from out of state to return in Michigan for 10-cents-a-piece. That’s the highest bottle deposit in the country.

They made it illegal for stores to knowingly accept out of state bottles. And they made bottlers put a special mark on returnable cans and bottles sold in Michigan.

The American Beverage Association challenged the legality of the special marking requirement. They argued making bottlers create a product that can only be sold in Michigan is too costly, and limits interstate commerce.

But a federal judge in Grand Rapids ruled in favor of the state this week. The judge says the beverage association didn’t show their burden is ‘excessive in relation to the local benefits.’

The association declined to comment, but said in a written statement:

“This law makes it more difficult to do business in Michigan and surrounding states. The mandatory requirement to place a unique mark on all of our industry’s beverages sold in Michigan is discriminatory and violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause.”

The association won’t say it will appeal the decision, but is considering its’ legal options.

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All the unclaimed deposits from Michigan cans and bottles really add up. The state gets about $12 million a year out of it.

A small amount of this money goes back to the retailers who sell the containers. But most of it is used for cleaning up old industrial land or toxic waste. The state also uses the money to finish the clean-up of federal Superfund sites.

With budget cuts, money for pollution clean-up is harder to come by. Anastasia Lundy is with the Department of Environmental Quality. She says her department used to rely on Michigan’s general fund.

"Well the programs that are funding environmental clean-up no longer receive any general fund whatsoever, so this has increased our reliance on these bottle bill funds to try to keep the programs meeting the most critical needs."

The state wants as much money in the clean-up fund as possible. They’re worried they are losing money to people they call smugglers. These are people bringing cans into Michigan from other states for deposit money.

This might sound like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer and Neuman drive cans and bottles into Michigan. But the state is getting serious about cutting down on bottle deposit fraud. So, they want bottle manufacturers to put a special mark on containers sold in Michigan. Bottle return machines would then only take containers with the mark-Michigan containers.

The state changed the bottle bill to require manufactures to add the mark, and the manufacturers are now suing the state over the changes to the bill.